


Hear No Evil

by Sifl



Series: Face of a Clock [1]
Category: Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: But the nature of platonic and romantic love isn't so simple, Destroying Childhood Memories, F/M, If anything this is Link/Saria, Not yours but Link's, The listed relationships are just relationships, besides romance is definitely NOT the focus, especially not here, not explicitly and exclusively romantic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-23 08:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Link is the Hero of Time; it is his Destiny. But how does that destiny shape him, really? <br/>And who is to say that "Hero of Time" is what defines him?</p><p>This is a retelling of the Ocarina of Time, but the amazing and heroic deeds of our hero is not the focus. This is about the people he meets, the influences that shape him, the things he learns, the demons he defeats, and even the ones he succumbs to. This is the story of a child who became a man and then something more, <i>something else entirely</i>.</p><p>Innocence does not last forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Secret to Everybody

There, in his dreams, the sky was blue and as pure as a robin's egg, disturbed only by the occasional puff of white drifting across its perfect surface.

Here, where he opened his eyes, the sky was a yellow haze marred by the trees jutting up into it like the quills on a porcupine. He looked out past the woods and to the valley, following the sparks of nymphs as they danced on each other’s heels.

Yes- In the forest played many spirits, and with the spirits played many children.

Some of the little mortals had wandered in on their own, some had been abandoned inside, and still others had been pulled in by the imps of the wood and the promises they whispered. Once the children had entered, the forest proved to be not only dark and tricky but possessive of whatever came into its clutches, wrapping its visitors in its own ancient magic and bending them to its rules; they would never grow past ten nor would they ever leave the enchanted woods. This did not bother the children, however. All the adventure and excitement they could ever want was in the expanse of trees that protected them from harm. In fact, if you asked the Kokiri children how they got there, not one would be able to tell you. To them, life began only after they had been guided into the forest by the glow of the fairies and the song of the leaves.  
And guided the children were- to further enforce the mutual love and understanding of the forest and its adopted kin, each child had a beloved companion in the form of the very fairy that had illuminated the path through the dark woods to the forest meadow they now lived in. Like everything else in the world of magic, the guidance of a fairy had a dual meaning to the wise woods. 

Creatures that failed to be good enough to befriend a sprite would be lead in circles until they lost their minds and became a monster, doomed to spend the rest of eternity searching for the exit in madness…  
Indeed, a fairy was the symbol of being a Kokiri forest child. No Kokiri was without one, as it was impossible to get to the core forest meadow in the first place without a fairy guide.

Alas, every rule has its exception.

Link was a child who did not appear particularly outstanding in the crowd of Kokiri - his hair was a common shade of blonde, and his skin was the same color as everyone else's. His long ears had been stretched and shaped by the melodies of the wood as all the others' had been, and his height and young features were a Kokiri standard. Everything about him was perfectly normal for a forest child, but he was still never accepted by the other children.

The long and short of it was that Link had no fairy, and that made him an outsider.

On this particular day, Link was napping in the woods beyond the Kokiri's meadow, dreaming of a perfectly cyan sky. He thought it odd because he had no memory of ever seeing one outside of his dreams, but in them they were almost constant. As he slowly opened his eyes to see the yellow blanket spread above him, he pondered the thought of another sky actually existing.

He often did wonder if he could rise above the saffron of his world and see the blue skies that were beyond it.

A loud thud interrupted him from his reverie, and he rolled over to see if his one and only friend Saria had arrived.

Link was disappointed to see a redheaded boy searching awkwardly through the grass. The newcomer was not anything like Saria, and Link wondered if the boy was planning a mean prank. He watched him in silence as the other grunted in effort as he tramped through the grass.

After a long while of the other boy's oblivious pillaging of the earth, Link decided that he wasn't in any danger of being picked on. He stood up and walked toward the other child.

"What are you looking for, Shad?"

Shad's freckled face popped out of the grass in surprise, his green fairy bobbing around behind him. He considered Link's sudden appearance for a moment before answering.

"I am looking for a caterpillar." Link inquisitively cocked his head to the side.

"I want to watch it turn into a butterfly. Linder," Shad nodded to the fairy, "says that's what a caterpillar does. It goes into a cocoon stage first, but…" Shad was a know-it-all like his two brothers, but Link knew that he rarely got the chance to be the center of attention. He took advantage of showing off whenever he could. "… Anyway, I want to watch it."

"How are you going to watch it for that long?" Link asked. "Are you going to stay out here with it for days?"

Shad looked like he had been caught doing something bad. He searched around the immediate area and whispered to Link only when he was certain that nobody else was around.

"I'm gonna put it in this." Shad pulled out a glass jar with a stick and several leaves in it.

Link had only heard stories about glass from the fairies. According to them, the evil adult man had once come and ruthlessly captured the fair folk in clear prisons of it before leaving the woods. This display of malicious intent was the basis for the forest’s rejection of grown people. But that was just a fairytale, right? Link dubiously reached out his hand and was amazed when he did indeed come into contact with a smooth and nearly invisible surface.

"Where did you find this?"

Shad grinned. "It's a secret to everybody."

Link shrugged and began to help Shad find his test subject. He went over to search a nearby tree, Linder following to help examine the nooks and crannies.

Linder was a chatty sprite, even more so than his child. In about five minutes, Link found himself laughing and joking with the little green fairy and all his shyness and earlier suspicion forgotten. The caterpillar was found and Link, Linder, and Shad began to walk back to the forest meadow together.

As they talked, Shad realized that he liked Link's company. He couldn't understand why all the Kokiri picked on him- Link was smart and fun to be around once he came out of his shell. In fact, Shad was beginning to think that a fairy wasn't the only marker of a kindred forest child.

"Y'know, Link, I don't think I've ever heard you talk so much," Shad mused aloud.

As they crested the hill above the village, Link’s shyness began to reemerge. "You probably won't ever again," he mumbled.

"Huh?" Shad wasn't able to hear him clearly. Linder had, and changed the subject as to dominate the conversation and distract both children. He wavered to and fro around the glass prison and reminded both boys of the terribleness of being imprisoned.

The fairy’s words had quite an effect on the two Kokiri. Shad had just finished promising to Linder that he would release the caterpillar if it didn't like living in the jar when he tripped on a tree root.

The slick glass cage flew from Shad’s hands and crashed on the ground, shattering in pieces. With it, the lighthearted mood was destroyed and the companions forlornly gazed at the fragments.  
The trio kept still until Link regained his wits. Cautiously, he wandered over and scooped up the unharmed caterpillar, careful to not scare it any more than it already had been.

Shad got on his hands and knees and continued to stare at his mess.

"Shido and Malo are going to be so mad," he whimpered. "They're gonna yell at me and never let me borrow anything again." His sniffing evolved into tears.  
"Whad' am I gonna do?" He wailed to Linder.

Link looked from the broken glass to the weeping Shad. It wasn't fair for his brothers to punish him for an accident.

"Why don't you just tell them I did it?" Shad looked at Link like he was sprouting another head.

"No! I can't! They'll be mean to you!" His lower lip trembled.

Link smiled. "They are already mean to me. Let me do this for you."

Shad stood up slowly, his childlike innocence showing in his eyes. "I don't want that to happen to you. You're my friend."

"You were nice to me and talked to me today. I want to do this for you."

Shad looked like he wanted to argue, but Linder gave him a gentle push towards the forest meadow. At his guardian’s urging, the boy ran to his home with Linder following only after giving Link a nod.  
Turning back to the glass, Link admired how its surface made the light from the yellow sky turn a light blue, like the skies in his dreams. He reached down to take a piece so he could show Saria and tell her about what happened today, but he decided against it when the sharp edges cut his hand.

He'd just have to keep it a secret to everybody.


	2. Unlikely Bonding

In this dream, there was a ceiling of rock over his head in place of a sky. He was creeping over and around uneven, jagged, black stone in intense heat and the weight of an unknown object resting across his back made him feel like he was suffocating. Suddenly, a great rumbling and shaking coursed through the cavern. He turned to see the piles of rock around him writhe and tumble themselves into the shape of an enormous monster. With a roar, the great beast rose from its mother earth and reared up on its hind legs, showering spittle of molten rock around the cave before its feet crashed down upon the ground with a thunderous sound. Its teeth, like stalactites, parted once again and the back of its huge throat glowed like embers, brighter than the sky, brighter than Saria’s eyes, brighter than even the glow of the fairy dipping and weaving around the monster's head...

Link sat at the foot of his tree house, happily carving away at its base. He'd finished a sloppy caricature of himself and a shaky orb that was meant to be a fairy companion and had started on the head of his rock dragon. If only he could get the teeth just right, then it would be perfect to show Saria.

"What's that?" A dreadfully familiar voice made Link drop the rock he had been carving with as he turned to face the speaker. Mido, the self-proclaimed boss of the Kokiri, stood behind Link, watching him draw. Link knew, with an insight few children had, that Mido was nothing but a bully who liked to throw his weight around and not a true leader. He decided to try to ignore him in the hopes that Mido would go away.

However, Mido's persistence continued to be as boundless as his disapproval of Link.

"Hey, fairyless, I asked you a question. Or are your messed up ears the reason you don't have a fairy?" It was true that Link's ears were slightly rounded on the end, but it was barely perceptible to the casual onlooker.

"I'm drawing," Link mumbled.

Mido ignored Link's answer, his attention changing to the whereabouts of the girl he liked. "Where's Saria?"

"She's with the Great Deku Tree," whispered Link.

Mido pouted. "She's always with you or with Father." 

The name the Kokiri called the great tree at the edge of the forest meadow was Father, as he protected them from harm and taught them the stories of the forest. In fact, Link was the only one to call the Great Deku Tree by his full title, as Mido had told Link that he wasn't a real forest child and unworthy of being a son to the deity. And even with all of his doubts on Mido’s authority, Link believed him. 

"The Great Deku Tree is really smart and tells her stuff," Link retrieved his rock and resumed the teeth on his picture.

"I'll bet you can't go because Father doesn't trust a boy without a fairy. Grinning cruelly, Mido saw that he had again hit Link’s biggest weak spot. “Yeah. He knows you’ll become a Stalfos for sure."

Link gave an involuntary shiver. Stalfos were the twisted forms of those who were lost in the ancient woods without a fairy. Secretly, Link was terrified that he would become one during his many expeditions into the woods. Saria had always told him not to worry so, but the awful though was always was nagging at the back of his head.

Gazing at his monster drawing, Link pretended that Mido's comments hadn't bothered him.

"Is that s'posed to be you?" The bully gestured to the carving.

"No," Link lied.

"Yeah, it is. It’s even got your dumb hat."

Link frowned and absentmindedly adjusted his emerald cap. It had once been short and square like the one Mido wore, but was now elongated from being mended so many times by Saria after Link had repeatedly torn it on their excursions.

"It isn't dumb," defended Link weakly.

"It isn't the way it’s supposed to be. You couldn't even keep it in the right shape." The bully snatched Link's hat off of his head.

With a yell of upset surprise, Link forgot his picture and dove to get his hat back. Mido began to play keep away with the smaller boy, but stopped when he got a better glance of the monster Link had been carving.

"Whoa!" He knelt down to get closer, abandoning the hat. Its owner quickly snatched it up before Mido noticed. "What is that?"

"It was in a dream I had." Link shoved his green headwear back where it belonged and started again on his masterpiece.

Completely mesmerized, Mido watched Link continue his drawing until he found something else to criticize the artist for.

"Wait a minute! You're too dumb to use the right hand!" At Mido's outcry, Link looked at his fingers and wiggled them. He turned his palm over, thinking that there might be something stuck on it that had grabbed Mido’s attention, but didn't see anything unusual about it. He decided the other boy was pulling his leg and began to draw again.

With a cry of exasperation, Mido tore the stone from his hands.

"Use this hand, stupid!" Mido started adding stripes to the beast with his right hand before moving onto the stick man.

"What are you doing?" Link tried to pull Mido's arm away. Being bigger, Mido easily shoved Link off.

"Geez, fairyless, you really are stupid. You gotta fight that thing with something." He furiously engrained what appeared to be a letter ’t’ into the stick figure's hand.

"What is it?" Link peered at it suspiciously.

"It's a sword, stupid."

"Huh?"

Mido's eyes began to twinkle.

"I heard a story once. A lot of people ran into the forest, see? And when the adults became Stalfos, the children helped the forest by killing the monsters with a sharp cross thing they found. It wasn't rock or wood, though. It was made of metal and called a sword. And then, the forest was so happy that the kids became Kokiri!"

"What happened to the sword?" Meek though he was, Link's curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Mido answered with a thwack to Link's back. "Father hid it, stupid, so we wouldn't hurt ourselves!" He paused. “It was really powerful." 

After examining the picture one last time, Mido stood up and turned to go.

"It looks better since I fixed it," He declared, tossing the rock at Link's head.

"Ow!"

"Bye, Mr. No-fairy."

Link watched Mido's retreating form and picked up the rock that he had thrown. Idly, he pocketed it before looking at the picture on his tree house before realizing that was the nicest Mido had ever been to him.

Maybe he would tell Saria about it later.


	3. Shopkeeper

This time, he was floundering through a sea of tall, slippery creatures, each one rushing by him as if stopping would hinder their ability to breathe.  
He struggled around in the mass of slick commuters as he tried to get to dry land, but was too inexperienced of a swimmer to make any headway. He felt himself go under and began to panic as he started to drown. Suddenly, something grabbed his foot and began to pull him in the opposite direction. After a blur of bubbles, he felt his head break the surface and he exhaled water and gasped.

His savior let go of his foot and smiled down at him in a strange, fishy way as it handed him something.

Link began to wake up and couldn't make out the meaning of the words the lifeguard had said next.

With that dream as motivation, Link had taken to improving his swimming skills in the little pond at the center of the Kokiri Forest meadow whenever his best friend was away. He was getting pretty good- at least, he could swim faster than Saria in a race (and outdoing her in anything was impressive, in his opinion.)

He pushed off a boulder in the water and tried to get to the other side and back in one breath.

When he succeeded, he made a great splash of returning to the surface.

"Hey!" yelled a voice. "You got all my stuff wet!"

Link whipped his sopping head around to see a soggy Ahzull furiously moving satchels of things out of the way of the water, his grey fairy bobbing up and down in perturbed agreement.

"What is all that stuff?" Link tentatively asked.

"Stuff for my busy-ness! And you got it all wet!"

Ahzull was incredibly short, incredibly gruff, and incredibly quiet- almost more so than Link in his silence. For him to yell so angrily was a cause for curiosity.

"I'm sorry," Link whispered.

Ahzull grunted in reply and began organizing the contents of his bag into piles, giving a wide berth to the pond Link was floating in.

Link took this as an acceptance to his apology; Ahzull had always acted little more than indifferent to the fairyless boy. "What's a busy-ness?" he ventured.

"When I trade this stuff for other stuff."

"Oh." Link paused. "What kind of stuff?"

"Those colored rocks that sparkle." Ahzull's eyes also began to sparkle like the gemstones he spoke of- they could be found all over the forest and in the center of the larger rocks (which Mido liked to break by throwing them at Link's house before giving the pretty fragments inside to Saria. She usually yelled at Mido for it instead of accepting his gifts, which didn't help much despite her intentions.)

"I like those colored rocks a lot," he finished.

"Will it work?" Link asked.

"Of course it will work! Everybody wants this stuff." With a sweeping gesture, Ahzull showed off his merchandise. 

Link saw the appeal of the stock: Deku nuts to throw as pranks, long and sturdy sticks for pretend sword fights, and seeds for slingshots were among the things Ahzull had already stacked.

"Can I help?" Link was getting excited just looking at them.

"Okay." As soon as he said it, the petite boy stopped to reconsider, narrowing his hair-hidden eyes. "Wait- you aren't gonna try to take the stuff and the sparkly rocks, are you?" The rumors and slander spread about the boy without a fairy had reached even his ears.

The thought hadn't even crossed Link's mind. "No. You can keep all the sparkly stones."

That was all it took to convince Ahzull, and he nodded in consent.

Link leapt out of the water and shook himself dry (away from Ahzull's piles, of course) before going over to help him organize.

"What's this?" He pulled out a flat piece of wood with a familiar symbol smeared on it in red berry juice.

"A shield." Ahzull's habit of short answers didn't explain much, but Link was satisfied with it.

Pretty soon, the two boys had set up a nice little kiosk and were doing rather well- a few passers-by gave them business.

"Where are we gonna keep the stuff when it's bedtime?" Link asked suddenly.

"Can't we leave it here?"

"No. Mido might take it."

"Oh." Mido's bullying hadn't been reserved for just Link- he had been known to be mean to the others in the past. Because of his short stature, Ahzull was also a frequent target. At least, he had been until Link was old enough to divert Mido’s attention.

"What about your house? It's your stuff."

"Hey, yeah, I can turn my house into a busy-ness! That's a good idea!" Ahzull grinned and began moving his wares into his house across the pond. Elated by his playmate's words, Link basked in the small praise.  
The two worked quickly and excitedly, speaking more than either thought the other capable of doing.

They had just finished rearranging the furniture into suitable positions when Link noticed that Ahzull was too short to see over the makeshift counter.

"Let me be the counter-man. I'm tall enough."

“What’s a counter?”

In reply, Link patted the table in front of their wares. “This.”

"Oh.” The petite Kokiri looked from his new counter to his new friend. “What can I do, then?"

"Um," Link thought for a moment. "You can go around and tell people to come to our shop."

"Our what?" Ahzull noticed that Link used lots of new words.

"Our shop. Our, um," Not realizing that the word 'shop' was not native to the Kokiri tongue, Link floundered for an explanation. "Our busy-ness." Link began to wonder where he learned ‘counter’, too.

"You use funny words."

Still unsure of where he had learned the words, Link took on some customers while Ahzull and his fairy went outside to advertise.

For a while, everything was fine- Link would trade some things from the many piles for what he and Ahzull had decided was a fair amount of stones, sometimes adjusting when someone would come in one or two colored rocks short (Link had been told not to do that, but it had been Shad who had been asking and Link paid for the difference out of his own pocket, figuring what Ahzull didn't know couldn't hurt him.) Shad smiled in chagrin and Linder swiftly interjected with a joke to keep the conversation going.

But, as usual, Link's friendliness and enthusiasm could not bridge the impasse between himself and his fully acknowledged Kokiri peers.

With his own fairy perched on his shoulder, Mido strolled into Ahzull's house. Silently, Shad shrunk to the sidelines, afraid of what was could happen next.

"Hey! Now I don't have to go get my own!" Mido walked behind the counter and stretched out a hand to take some Deku seeds. Link boldly stepped in front of him.

"What are you doin', fairyless? Move!" Mido tried to shove him away, but Link held his ground.

"You can't take them because, um," Flustered, Link wasn't sure what words he should use. He was thinking of lots of things to say, but they had all been nonsense to Ahzull and Shad and he didn't want Mido to be able to use them as fuel for his spiteful fire. Besides, he was just plain too scared of the taller boy to make words come out.

"Because um, um, um," mocked Mido, "They ain't yours, is they? This ain't even your house!"

Link knew he had to say something, fast, and threw away his mental filter. "This is a shop. A store. So that's why," he squeaked out.

"What kind of stupid thing are you saying?" Looking simply confused, Mido looked somewhat less threatening.

"Uh, well, uh, we… have, uh, things that you can, um, buy and we, uh, sell them for, er, colored rocks." From the shadows, Shad wished that Link wasn't spewing what seemed to be total nonsense, as the words 'buy' and 'sell' were completely alien to him. "See, this stuff is merchandise and you have to pay for it because, well, it's fair that way, um," Link shifted his weight nervously. "Do you, uh, get it?"

Truth be told, nobody, fairies included, had any idea what he was talking about. Mido got the impression that Link was trying to make a fool of him and got angrier than he had been before.

"Are you tryin' to make me look dumb? 'Cause I'll tell you who's dumb- you!" Red faced, he grabbed a nearby stick and struck Link across the chest with it. It broke, and he continued pelting Link with whatever was in his reach. With a yelp, the fairyless boy snatched up the wooden shield and tried to block the barrage as he took cover behind one of Ahzull's shelves. Mido was enraged that Link could defend himself- he ran out of ammo and began to push the bookshelf against the wall to pin his elusive prey down.

Link was sandwiched against the wall and began to wriggle himself out of the situation, using the shield to help him push the bookshelf off. With all of his focus on pressing against the shelf harder, Mido did not notice a panicked Shad take one of the Deku nuts from the sack he had just purchased and toss it at him.

The nut, nature's magic flash bomb, pegged Mido in the side of his face. He screamed as he was blinded and fell backwards, releasing the shelf as he went. Also completely dazed and stunned from the brightness of the flash, Link stumbled into the second set of shelves that contained the rest of the glowing goods. It all went down in a glorious eruption of light that filled the room and streamed out the doorway, catching the entire meadow by surprise. Ahzull bounded in, alarmed.

He saw Mido lying on the ground, totally blinded, and Link, eyes shielded, standing above a fallen bookshelf, broken 'stuff' strewn everywhere. The grey fairy immediately started yelling at Link as his charge kept his distance, seething.

"My eyes! You stupid fairyless idiot!" On the floor, Mido was going ballistic. "It's all your fault! It's always your fault!"

Ahzull scanned the disaster and noticed Shad crouched against the wall, presumably to protect his eyes.

"What happened?" Ahzull demanded.

Shad had been far enough away to regain his vision quickly and stammered out a messy reply.

"What HAPPENED?" Ahzull began to lose his temper.

Desperately, Shad looked to the dazed, unresponsive Link.

"Mido was, um, um…" He wished he were as brave as his brothers.

"I didn't do anything!" moaned the bully. "It was all him!" At that, Shad became outraged.

"No, it wasn't Link's-!" With a grunt, Link pulled himself together enough to send Shad a pleading message with his eyes. While not at all at a loss for words now that Mido was showing his manipulatively dishonest nature, Shad bit his tongue and obeyed his accused friend’s command.

"Make him go! He doesn't know it all! He doesn't know what happened!" Mido was still complaining on the floor. At Mido's demand, Ahzull's grey fairy shooed the freckled boy outside the house, but not after he shared a silent confirmation from the hapless Link across the room.

Ahzull gave the wrongfully accused a glare that could have singed a scrub's leaves.

"I shoulda known you'd be trouble. Get out and don't ever help me with my busy-ness again." Slowly, like he had lead in his shoes, Link obeyed and headed towards the door. But when Ahzull decided that Link wasn't going fast enough, he lost his patience. He leapt in the air and stomped his feet, trampling the hat he had discarded from his head. "I said to get out! Out! OUT!"

Link picked up the pace and left the infuriated Ahzull with the blinded and whining Mido. As he passed him, Link had sworn that he had seen the bully grinning from his place on the floor. Perhaps the 'trouble' Ahzull had referred to Link causing had nothing to do with Link at all-hadn't Ahzull been the diminutive victim at one point? It could be- the littlest Kokiri wasn't one to explain himself.

Did it matter? Link reflected on the events of the day and what he had been doing at Ahzull's "busy-ness."

_"Hey, you ought to be more careful. My buddy has a shop over there and he might be selling something that could help you. Of course, you may not be able to buy any of the merchandise at his store, being a kid and all, but it was worth a shot."_

Was that what the creature in his dream had meant by all those weird words? He felt like he was on the verge of understanding so many things, but that something was holding him back, like the current he had been swept up in while he had slept.

He'd have to ask Saria about all of this later.


	4. Fly

Despite the unfamiliar black sky and the fact that the foreign air was pushing against him somehow, he knew this dark dream best of all. A white blur would run by, and when he turned around he would be facing a grotesque man with brown skin and rounded ears.

He would look into those eerie yellow eyes and the unfamiliar drops of cold water would seem to fade away- there was nothing but a deep emptiness reflected in the man's eyes and it greedily tried to suck out the boy's soul to fill itself. And as he had no defense against it, he could only stare back.

Link would succumb to a state of panicked paralysis until he could tear himself awake in a cold sweat.

Every night, that dream had been the same and every night it would remain the same. It was as constant as the cloud of dragonflies that buzzed over the small spring that pooled in the center of the Kokiri Forest meadow. Link watched them- reds, blues, greens, yellows, oranges, even a few pinks…

Suddenly, he was snapped from his reverie when a flash of wings cut across his vision and paused on his nose. Link wiggled it to try to get the unwelcome visitor off of his face. When the dragonfly didn't move, he moved his hands towards it and tried to coax it off of his nose and onto his fingers. Obligingly, the insect fluttered onto the new perch and stared back at him with its buggy eyes.

Link was amazed- he'd never seen a dragonfly this color- he'd never seen anything quite this color! It wasn't quite purple, but it wasn't quite blue, either. It was exotic and wild; he had to show it to somebody! He looked around eagerly for his best friend even though he doubted she'd be around.

His gut feeling was correct; Saria wasn't here again today. The Great Deku Tree had been talking to her an awful lot as of late, and Link found himself all alone a whole lot more often as the days passed.

The closest person to him was sitting on the watchtower that the Kokiri had built to play lookout from. Link scrambled up the ramps, dragonfly in hand.

As he got closer, he saw that it was the girly Fado. Link never liked her much, as she was the first to tattle on him or accuse him or tell Mido that he had done something (she only did it when her tall tales weren't true- especially when she had actually been the real culprit.) It didn't take very much to set her off, either, and while Link was aware of this he was too excited to think about any consequences.

Link shoved his discovery into her line of vision without a second thought.

Fado shrieked when she saw the bug and moved her hands from styling her hair in favor of swatting at it. The dragonfly fluttered to the ground, its right wing broken.

"Eww! Li-ink! I'm telling Mido that you shoved a bug in my face!"

"I didn't want to scare you! I thought it was pretty." He sank to the ground and tried to gather up the wounded dragonfly into his hands.

Fado gave it a disapproving look. "It's gross. You should squish it."

Link felt tears welling up in his eyes. "It wasn't hurtin' anything."

As it struggled, Link felt his guilt grow more and more. It was his fault the poor dragonfly was maimed.

"So? It's ickier looking on the ground and it can't fly anymore."

The dragonfly got its second wind and clumsily zipped off Link's outstretched fingers as if to prove Fado wrong.

They watched it fly out of sight, dipping and weaving like a dying man's steps.

"I guess it was a pretty color," Fado said.

Link turned to look at the ground in front of her.

"It was kinda the same color as your eyes." She scrunched her face up in distaste, as if admitting that was like eating something foul.

"I'm telling," she finished, jumping off the play tower and heading towards Mido's house.

Link decided to go back to his own house. He'd ask Saria what color his eyes were later, when he didn't feel so guilty about the dragonfly.

Maybe the nightmare would help him forget about it.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

A single blue fairy flitted through the trees as the sun began to glint over the canopy. Their Father, the Great Deku Tree, was calling her and she knew it was urgent. Hastily and callously, she zipped across the great forest and made whatever she came across make way for her. Unfortunately, her direct approach left her little reaction time; she collided against something else in the air and felt it give at her push. 

Whatever it was, it fell to the ground and rolled over as the fairy stopped and watched it. It was a beautiful indigo dragonfly and Navi couldn't help but feel that its death was an omen; its left wing was perfectly undamaged, quivering in the air.


	5. Kaepora Gaebora

It was an endless nightmare of running.

There had been an episode with dying trees and giant spiders and grinning eyes, and the only light had been from a shining green stone- it was shining brighter as he watched the forest die. It was dying, and someone was yelling at him for it (was it Mido?) but he was desperate, _desperate_ to keep going. Mean words flew around him along with some punches, and he thought that for the first time in his life, he'd successfully stood up against someone without Saria's help.

But it didn't matter, because he had to keep running.

Ahzull looked up over the counter when he heard the commotion, but the issue was too far over his head for him to understand.

He headed for the entrance to the forest and tried to block out the cries and screams of the forest spirits as they spread the news:

"He is dead! The Guardian is dead! He has killed our Father!"

The inaudible panic spread across the forest, and he knew that Fado's critical eyes couldn't comprehend anything but the view of his retreating back from her perch. Next to her, her fairy was quivering like a dragonfly's wing.

He kept running, running on past Saria's house.

He fled until he collided into Shad, who tried his best to stop him.

"It isn't safe out there! Stay here, where the Great Deku Tree can protect us!" Shad tried to position himself in front of the path to the bridge.

"The Great Deku Tree is dead," he blurted, and shoved past his friend, ignoring all of Shad's shaky denials and leaving him far behind, splayed on the ground like shattered glass.

He tried to run away from the tumultuous chaos in awakened in his wake- he plugged his ears, but the forest only got louder. He ran faster- if he could get away from the noise, he could get away from the hungry, monstrous eye that was currently searching for him.

"Cursed," whispered the trees.

But he'd closed that eye himself, he'd broken that curse, and he'd saved the Great Deku Tree, hadn't he? None of this should be happening! He did exactly what he had been told to do, as his Guardian, his _Father_ , had said. This shouldn't be happening.

_Why was he running?_

The question was louder and louder, almost drowning out the agony of the flora around him. The answer followed, barking out each syllable in time with his feet.

"He is dead! The Guardian is dead! He has killed our Father!"

In the aftershock of such a powerful spirit dissipating, even the woods on the far edge of the Kokiri Forest Valley were reeling and flailing as they tried to stabilize themselves. They expressed their grief at the death of their kin, sparing no creature with the ears to hear them.

"He is dead! The Guardian is dead! He has killed our Father!"

The accusation resounded through his entire being as he veered off the trails he and Saria used to play on. His head hurt from the noise, and stars in his eyes spotted out everything. 

He was going to go crazy if it didn't stop. He had to escape it. He had to _run faster_ \- he was getting Lost in the Woods. Despair coiled around his heart as it sucked him in like quicksand. In its catastrophic wake, the aftermath of the death of the forest god was going to strip off his sanity, and then his flesh, until he was nothing but a walking skeleton. He was going to die, just like that, and his body would transform into the monster he so feared. It was like fighting a storm that was so much more than the water and wind that beat onto is face in every other nightmare. _The panic wasn't going to stop and he was going to die because he failed and because Mido was right and Fado had told on him and because Ahzull had trusted him and because Shad had been his friend and…_

And then the noise suddenly stopped.

He was standing on the bridge, and the air had stopped moving. As he focused his blurry vision, he discovered that the forest spirits around him had stopped their tantrums and were lazily floating through the warm, stagnant air like undisturbed leaves on a muddy pond. His eyes didn’t linger on them for long, though- his attentions were drawn to the figure standing on the other side of the bridge.

If you had asked his little companion, who trailed in a dusty blue rush after him, she'd have sworn that this section of the forest was completely frozen in time, like the death of their compatriot Deku Tree meant absolutely nothing. She caught up to her shaken child and circled around the quiet pool of air until she too found what he was staring at.

Saria was there.

The forest girl opened her mouth, and Link felt himself slip into a trance as she began to speak. Her voice was soft and low, part of the atmosphere, and he couldn't quite bring himself to answer her and break the melody. He was so completely enchanted by the spell of her words and the woods that all the force it took to move him was the push of an ocarina into his hands. 

"I hope you'll come back to the forest and visit," She whispered.

He wanted to believe that there was no reason to visit, that he wasn’t going to leave- not ever- but the Great Deku Tree had told him he must. The words froze in his throat. 

He took a step back and felt his heart rip out of his chest.

Here his feet were, moving without him.

Link felt himself begin to cry. He really, truly, desperately did not want to go, but Saria’s eyes told him that he had to. He took another step back, like he was reeling from an unseen blow.

Finally, he turned and ran, knowing that if he ever looked back he'd never make it. Maybe this was all just a dream, and he'd wake up soon and go tell Saria- the _real_ Saria, the one who'd finish teaching him to play the ocarina and who'd stand up for him when Mido yelled at him- all about this terrible dream.

"Watch out!" blurted Navi.

Link's foot caught on a tree root and he barely perceived himself falling until he was met with a painful greeting from the forest ground.

"Are you alright?" asked Navi worriedly.

 _No,_ he wanted to say. _No, I am not alright._

Instead he held his tongue and lay face down, nursing his wounded feelings instead of his nose and forehead. All of himself flooded out of his watery eyes and ran down into the dirt until it congregated in the hole in his chest.

The world was quiet and so was Link.

After an eternity in the blessed silence, he began to calm down until he could recount the Great Deku Tree's last request that Link leave the forest and find, well, he wasn't sure what the things the guardian had referred to were.

 _It would be foolish to keep going,_ he thought to himself. _I don't even know what a "Princess of Destiny" is. And, if Father did give me a fairy, then I truly am a Kokiri._ He watched Navi, his new little friend, dance around his head in motherly worry from the corner of his eye. _If I am a Kokiri and I leave the forest, I'll die._ He gritted his teeth as he felt a bruise that was forming under his eye. _But if I don't at least try to obey Father's request, all of this will have been wasted. And how will I make the others not be mad, anyway?_ Tiredly, he rolled over and prepared to meet the sulfurous sky, silently wondering how he should go about this problem.

He probably would've stayed there for quite a long time had the sky peeking down at him not been a bright blue.

It was exactly at that moment that the world's natural music returned and reached out to surprise Link, like the whole setup had been a planned prank.

He jumped up faster than he'd thought possible and began pacing in and about the trees to see if he could find a clearing to see the sky better. Navi fluttered in awe behind him. Looking up again, Link noticed a giant, glowing ball sitting up in the sky, illuminating the whole area! He couldn't believe that was possible and foolishly cast his unguarded eyes on it to see what it was.

Navi answered Link's yelp of pain as it burned his eyes with shouts of her own worry, and pretty soon they began an impromptu shouting match with one another. Navi would shriek, "What's wrong?" and Link, unsure of what to do, would answer with nonsensical screams.

A sudden hoot of laughter volleyed back at them and Link scrambled around to capture source within his spotty vision.

"Link, look up here!"

After another agonizing attack from the light, Link rested his gaze upon the biggest owl he had ever seen. Its wingspan dwarfed the dilapidated branch it was perched upon, with bits of snowy white peeking out of the rich, chocolate colored feathers that started from the wingtip and spread all over the owl's large form. Most noticeable, however, were the intricate markings upon its broad face, right below its beak. Link was amazed at how much they looked like a second set of eyes and couldn't help but stare at them.

"It appears that the time has come for you to finally start your adventure!" hooted the great bird, "You will encounter many hardships ahead, assuming you can get past the perplexing mystery of the light of the Hylian sun…"

Link stuttered, still unsure how to reply.

"Can't speak?" The owl flipped its head around until the markings below his beak pointed upward, where his eyes previously were, to get a better look. Unthinkingly, Link followed the movement and felt himself lose his balance and fall over as he tried to twist his own neck the same way.

The owl began to hoot in its obnoxious cacophony of laughter once again as Link tried to put his head on straight again.

"Well, my boy, such is your fate! To be forever clueless!"

Link felt himself flush and abashedly tried to hide behind Navi, who barely covered his nose. The giant fowl only laughed louder at this futile movement and his feathers began to stand on end.

Navi flew up closer to the owl. "Please, sir, he's already discouraged enough! Don't make it worse by mocking him," she scolded. Link felt himself flush in embarrassment.

The owl, over his initial outburst of amusement, preened himself and smoothed over the feathers he had ruffled during his bout of laughter. "Well, now, boy," the bird continued, his voice more somber, "You shouldn't get discouraged, not even during the toughest of times. There's a lot depending on you."

Link nodded timidly. Was the owl referring to the mission the Great Deku Tree had given him?

"If you follow this path, you'll find a castle. Inside the castle, you'll meet a princess."

A princess? Like a princess of destiny? Link nodded in reply and pretended to know what the owl was talking about.

"I guess I'll leave you to it, then. You don't have much time before nightfall. See you around." With a flurry of feathers, leapt of the perch and took off into the sky.

"Oh, and one more thing," he shouted over his shoulder, "Don't leave the path!"

Link turned his thoughts away from the events he'd left behind and towards the endless blue sky in front of him, hoping that it held the promise of something better. Navi finished yelling her thanks to their feathered guide and joined Link, lightly flying behind him. They walked in silence and reflected upon their own thoughts.

"Hey, Navi? Can I ask you a question?" Link finally asked.

"What is it?"

"What's nightfall?"

She paused. "I don't know."

"Oh, well. Maybe it's not that important. Maybe it's a meal of the day."

Navi shrugged in reply and continued to follow her little green charge onto the beaten path in front of them, wondering if leaving the forest was the right thing to do after all.


	6. Stupid Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HA, I can't believe I forgot to upload the rest of these from years ago. Remedying that now.

"The giant glow in the sky is most definitely not a giant Deku nut, "Link decided, watching it sink lower and lower in the sky.

"Why did you ever think that it was?" Navi asked.

"What else was I supposed to think it was?"

Navi's wingstrokes sped up a hair. "I don't know, Link. I only know it as the sun."

"Oh," Link replied. "What's a sun?"

Navi balked. "The sun's the big glowing thing you just asked me about!"

"No, no, I know that, but that isn't what I _mean_." Link tried to elaborate, "I wanna know what _is_ it? What's it made of? What makes it glow?"

Navi had no idea how to answer. "I don't understand," she finally said.

"Oh," Link mumbled, acting a little more shyly, a little more like he had in the forest meadow around the other children. "I'm sorry. I guess it was a really stupid question."

"Why do you think it was stupid?" Navi asked.

"Well, because," As he walked, Link scuffed his feet around abashedly. "You know everything, so if I ask something that you can't understand, then it must be that I was saying something stupid again."

Navi was taken totally and absolutely by surprise. "You weren't saying anything stupid, Link," she answered automatically.

"Really?" the boy asked, pitifully hopeful.

Navi paused, trying to find the right words to lift his self-esteem. "You just think differently, that's all."

Link beamed, brightly. "That's what Saria says. But she also says that she's different, too."

He was so happy that Navi had said that she didn't think he asked stupid questions. Maybe she really was his friend and fairy, like all the forest kids had. Imagine- the little outcast had a fairy! At least one good thing had come out of this strange quest.

"Hey, Navi," Link piped up again, "I think you might be a little different, too." He turned and smiled at her.

She felt guilty for secretly thinking his question stupid.

The pair crested a large hill and Link noticed a huge stone edifice rising out of the twilight-kissed greens of the field.

"Look at that!" he said, completely enraptured. "Do you think we'll find a Princess of Destiny there?"

Navi knew what the stone wall surrounding the town was through the Great Deku Tree's lessons and stories of the outside world. "Probably. That's where the people of Hyrule live, Link," she said, proud to be able to appear knowledgeable, though all she really knew was textbook definitions. "That water surrounding the wall is called a moat and that tower near the opening is called a guard tower. Some of the people stand on top of it to look for danger."

"Okay, what's that?" Link asked, giddily pointing to the chains attaching the bridge to the opening in the town walls.

"The drawbridge?" She specified.

"Yeah, that's what it looks like it should be called!" He threw his arms up in a display of happiness. "But why are they closing it?"

Indeed, Navi could hear the clinking of the chains as they were being drawn upwards and their path to the princess being taken with it.

"Well, Link, it's for protection."

"Protection from what?"

"The darkness, I believe."

"You mean," he paused, "It's always got the sunlight in there, like how the Kokiri Forest Meadow never goes completely dark?"

"No, I don't think that's quite right." She puzzled over the predicament as the twilight faded into something blacker. "The Great Deku Tree says that with the darkness comes monsters and the people here shut them out."

"Oh." Link looked around. "I don't see any monsters," he said. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him and his face twisted into a horrified mask.

"Navi, are we monsters?"

He said it with such terror that for a moment she suspected he had figured out something she hadn't, but she shook the thought away. She wasn't supposed to be thinking stupid thoughts.

"No, silly, it just means that-" the concept clicked in tandem with the drawbridge and the city walls. "-the monsters come out at nightfall."

"Like what the giant owl had been talking about?" Link meandered towards the closed drawbridge and off the beaten path, not comprehending.

"Link! Get back on the path!" Navi shrieked.

"I am- the way to where the princess is has got to be the path, right?"

"No, see the part that doesn't have grass? That's the path!"

Link felt foolish for assuming he had known what a path was. Meekly, he squinted at the ground to try to find what his fairy friend had been talking about.

"Navi, it's too dark to see anything. Can you, um, come over here so I can see what you mean?"

Navi was completely exasperated and very afraid.

"Just walk toward me. Right now. It's over here." She flew in giant semicircles in the air, trying to take his attention off of the ground.

"But, Navi, you came over here," he said, his eyes not leaving the ground. "Is their danger around? You turned a weird color…"

Link marveled for a moment at the red-orange glow blooming at his feet and was about to ask Navi how fairies managed to change color when he noticed a second, twin glow peering out right next to the first one. He knelt down and reached out to touch it.

An audible cracking of bone-on-bone was heard as the earth around his feet tore up and a skeletal hand reached out of the ground and gripped Link's living one.

In his surprise, Link fell backwards and his momentum took the monster's arm with him. He stared at it, wide-eyed, and noticed that it still had enough flesh to possess five long, broken, bloody fingernails.

"Watch out!" Navi screamed, rushing through the air over to Link. She swatted the broken bone arm off of him and cast a nervous yellow glow around them both. "Link, those are monsters! They're stalchildren!"

The little stalfos that Link had snapped the arm from growled and clawed his way with its remaining arm to the surface.

It was a hunched-over, maimed little skeleton with orange-yellow eyes that burned holes into the darkness and illuminated the oversized, horribly mashed face and jagged, crooked teeth bent into it at painfully unnatural angles. Its spine was so bent that it might have made the comical silhouette of a baggage-weary peddler in another life, but Link and Navi only knew enough about it to tell that its hips and legs, while unnaturally bent like under some great weight, were persistently moving towards them.

It cackled maniacally when Link tried to back off from his place on the ground. Mustering a surprising swiftness, it gave a little swat with its attached arm and only laughed more when it managed to nick Link's cheek. Its nails were surprisingly sharp.

Link scrambled backwards and tried to block the thing's next swipe with the limb he had already broken off, but the skeleton grabbed it and threw it to the side.

Navi flew around Link's head and tugged on the hilt of his sword. "Don't be afraid of the Stalchild! Just…attack!" She knew that her words were hypocritical, but she also knew that doing nothing was going to get them both killed.

With clumsy hands, Link took the hint and jabbed his sword around in hopes of hitting something. In a lucky swipe he managed to knock the creature's legs off, but that didn't deter its determination to get to Link. It pulled itself forward, with one arm and one leg, still giving that sick smile.

Link jumped up to get off of its level and kicked its head from its crooked neck. The naked spine writhed. Each vertebrae crunched as they moved against each other and then the stranded torso flipped over onto its broken sternum, and, with each rib moving like a spindly insect leg, pursued Link.

Link made the little Kokiri sword give five hurried jabs into the writhing backbone centipede before he was sure it wasn't going to move anymore. He and Navi watched in sick fascination as the bone stilled and rotted into dirt before their very eyes.

"Navi," Link whispered, "Don't move. There are more."

She wanted to ask how he knew that, but before she could even buzz her wings, she heard the clatter of bone on wood and turned around to see Link jamming his shield into another monster's spine.

The skeleton wailed and she saw more eyes appear out of the ground, and a few hands, and feet, and heads, and arms started to make their way up.

Link finished slamming the stalchild closest to him into dirt and screamed to Navi, "The path! Navi, go back to the path!"

Startled, she flew out of the fray and illuminated the closest part of the trodden earth as quickly as she could.

"Here!"

Link pushed several stalchildren off with his shield and made a beeline for her yellow glow. He landed, a pile of forest green beneath her light, and she noticed a few tears and scratches on the back of his tunic. They faded from sight as he rolled over and onto his knees, sword and shield in hand.

With a look of sheer terror on his face, he watched the little skeletal soldiers surround both he and his fairy partner.

"Link, if you don't do something, we'll die," Navi said, upset that she had to give such an ultimatum. He didn't answer, and they were soon surrounded completely.

However, the moment their bony toes brushed the exposed soil of the beaten path, the beady little eyes and the deformed bodies all stopped their advance, like there was some unknown barrier in their way. The stalchildren gave a few swipes and a few disappointed wails before finally, thankfully, they burrowed back down into the earth one by one, leaving only their greedy eye sockets to pierce the night.

"I should have asked the owl more questions," Link muttered. Navi only blinked her light a few different colors in response.

They sat in silence for the rest of the night, countless orange lights burning into the darkness around them.


	7. Cacophony

His dream was the same as it usually was, with a dark form pursuing a white blur while the sky above him cried. It was so familiar that Link was genuinely surprised to see neither treetop nor yellow sky above him when he opened his eyes.

He sat up and pondered what this strange landscape was, what with its brilliant purples and pinks casting hues all over the bright green hills and poking out between the even bigger rises of land behind them. For a few moments he stayed completely still, utterly transfixed in the silent, serene scenery around him.

Then, there was a light birdsong from somewhere around him, like the tinkling of bells, and the spell was broken. Link remembered all about the Princess of Destiny and the Great Deku Tree, and he nervously fiddled with the clay ocarina in his tunic. With a start, Link also remembered the little monsters that had come out of the ground around him the night before. He warily looked at the ground and found nothing but the innocent dew on the grass as it reflected the rising sun. The natural noise of the field had taken a crescendo to its normal busy and carefree melody from yesterday, and, if he hadn't known better, Link never would have suspected an army of stalchildren to be buried beneath his feet. He sighed in relief and resigned himself to listening to the sounds of the world around him.

Finally, Link noticed that the drawbridge was down. He glanced around for Navi and found her asleep, nestled on the ground with his hat acting as a blanket. He scooped her up and carefully put her onto his head, placing his hat over her to keep her secure and warm before hurriedly moving towards this new, strange, stone place. After all, he didn't know when night would come again and bring those monsters with it. Whatever was behind that wall was safer than anything else that might appear out here, he figured, so why not explore it a little?

He giddily walked over the bridge and onto the cobblestones, marveling at how many there were. He was so transfixed on the ground beneath his feet that he wasn't paying attention to what was in front of him and collided into the tallest boy he had ever seen. Link winced as he fell flat on his rear.

"Welcome to Castle Town," the boy said. He wore a pointy helmet and breastplate that looked like it was made of the same material Link's sword was- Mido had called it "metal". He also had a long "metal" stick that looked like it was made to stab monsters in the eye. Link couldn't help but stare.

"Is there something I can help you with?" The tall boy shifted nervously under Link's blue gaze.

Link, transfixed, continued to gape with his mouth open.

"Kid?"

"Why are you so _tall_?" The little Kokiri drew the words out slowly and languidly, as if to accentuate them with the characteristic he was asking about.

The tall metal-boy hemmed and hawed. "Because I eat my vegetables," he stammered out.

"How many vegetables?"

"Listen kid, do you need something?"

"I need to know how many vegetables you ate," Link stated, completely serious.

"What?"

"I need to know how you got so tall!"

"I'm, um, sure you'll find out when you grow up," The boy said, adjusting his grip on his metal eye-skewer.

"Grow up?" Link began to laugh uncontrollably. "Kokiri don't grow up! Everybody knows that!" 

The guard, completely taken aback by this strange child, nodded weakly as Link walked away with a smile still on his face.

Link couldn't help but ogle at all the strange buildings he saw and give shy waves to all the people dressed in colorful, exotic clothing. He saw other metal people, too, and gave them more enthusiastic greetings. Their stoic reception of his gestures puzzled Link- how could all these folks dressed in such funny suits possibly be too shy to return his greetings? In his mind, there wasn't any risk of these people rejecting him because he was _different_ , he was the most normal Kokiri in town, and he had a fairy! For once, Link felt confident and he decided that confidence was something he liked.

When he spotted a magical rock ring that could spurt water from the center, he rushed over to the stone circle and stuck his face over the side. He made some impressed coos and examined the rock in an effort to discover what was making the water move through it.

"What's wrong?" Asked a little girl's voice.

"Nothing," said the enraptured Kokiri. He didn't take his eyes off the enchanted stone. "It's magic."

"Oh, the fountain?"

He stuck his hands in the cool, clear liquid. "Is that what it's called?" Link turned his head to his informant.

"Yeah." She was a friendly-faced redheaded girl with a little yellow scarf tied around her throat. "Daddy says it's older than I am."

"Daddy?" This word was completely foreign to Link.

The little girl rocked on her toes and fixed him with her own stare.

"Hey, your clothes are different," she said. "I've never seen you before. You aren't from around here." Her tone was unintentionally rude, but Link didn't notice.

"I'm from the forest. I've got a fairy to prove it!" He proudly made a move for his hat so he could reveal Navi, but then thought better of it as he remembered that she was still sleeping.

"Oh," she said, her eyes getting wider. "You're a fairy boy?" When Link nodded, her eyes started to sparkle and she clapped her hands together.

"My name's Malon! My daddy owns Lon Lon Ranch!" she grinned. "I'm so happy to meet a fairy boy!"

Most of the concepts she threw out went completely over Link's capped head. He wanted to ask her what a "daddy" and a "ranch" and a "Lon Lon" were, but he suddenly remembered his real purpose in coming to Hyrule.

"What's a 'Princess of Destiny'?" he blundered.

Malon looked confused. "I don't know. But the castle has a princess. My daddy went there a while ago to deliver some milk, but he hasn't come back yet." She rocked back and forth on her toes. "Maybe if you find him he can tell you."

He was about to ask her what a castle looked like when a mad torrent of feathers zipped by his feet and a frantic girl, even smaller than he or Malon, shoved through them. As with the miracle rock before it, Link was immediately drawn to this new phenomenon and started chasing after the white feathered thing. He easily bypassed the other, tinier pursuer and dove into the plumage of the squawking animal.

The creature was obviously a bird, but not any kind of bird Link had ever seen before. It was much too big to be a dove, too ugly, and had these strange red dangling pieces hanging off of its beak and head. With an unpleasant crow, the bird moved its captured leg in frustration and managed to give its handler a few optimistically ignored scratches.

The miniature girl and Malon caught up to the child in green as he gawked at his prize.

"Hey! Why'd you catch my cucco? I was having fun chasing it!" Two itty bitty boots began to stomp on the uneven cobblestones. "Let it go!"

Link felt sheepish around this new child's commanding attitude. He had never seen anybody so little be so loud before and wondered if the girl's voice had grown like the tall boy in the metal suit's body, as if in some kind of trade-off. He wanted to ask her if she had gotten to choose which grew, body or sound, but the girl reminded him so much of Mido that he decided not to. Unceremoniously, he dropped the white bird on the ground and it scurried away in a flurry of feathers.

The tiny child's white and yellow dress hurried after it, but quickly came to a halt in front of a curtain of brightly-dressed tall people. The creature scuttled through, but the little girl wasn't so lucky. A few of the members of the crowd yelled angrily at her and shooed her off. When she persisted, a few of them gave her just enough attention to shout some very not-nice words (most of which were unknown to young Link) at her before giving her a shove in the opposite direction. The other two children watched as their littlest peer proceeded to use her big voice in reply to the big people.

As the enormous wails filled the cobblestone square, Malon expressed her sympathy with a little coo and rushed forward to comfort the tiny girl. Link just clamped his hands over his ears.

Eventually, the teeny one calmed down enough to allow herself to be guided over to the fountain where Link was still standing.

Malon was fixing her companion's white headscarf, which had loosened in all the excitement. "There, there," she said, "It'll all be okay. You can chase the cucco later."

The little girl's miniature features scrunched up even smaller, defying all things Link thought possible. "It's all his fault that I can't chase it now!" A stubby, pointed digit accompanied her proclamation.

Link felt his earlier ebullience subsiding into shyness as Malon tried to make the little one stop shouting. The tall people were staring at him.

"I'm going to find a castle," he muttered, and scurried off in a manner that greatly resembled the ugly white bird's.

A wall of hair cut Link's frantic escape short.

"Whoa! Don't damage my beard, son!" A voice said, steadying the boy in green and pushing him away from the hair-wall. "This is my pride and joy, you know!" the owner of the voice cracked a smile that was barely visible behind the thick brown hair cascading from his chin and face.

Numbly, Link nodded and headed towards the closest door he saw. The hairy boy seemed nice, but Link was not feeling up to the challenge of staying out in the open with miniature yellow-Mido's eyes burning holes into his back.

He did not expect the inquisitive, purple orbs that found him on the other side of the doorway, nor the sharp brown ones that followed after. In fact, the whole experience had become an unexpected whirl of colors, sounds, sights, smells, and eyes, eyes, _eyes_ peering down and around at him, crushing him like the glare of condescending giants. Really, it was all the teensy-tiny girl's fault; she hadn't pointed Link out to the crowd, but had inadvertently pointed the crowd out to him.

He trembled a few moments under the weight of the crowd's gazes, particularly the weird, violet-eyed, rock-bodied creature's.

"Hello," it sighed. "Are you here to buy some of the Goron's special crop?"

What an odd voice! It spilled from somewhere deep in the creature's body and splashed against the insides of its cavernous belly before finally evaporating out of its mouth in a thick gas that came in through the ears rather than the nose. It billowed and swirled about in the Link's head, and the boy could see himself surrounded by heat waves that warped the craggy mountain earth as if the very world around him were trembling.

The vision subsided as rapidly as it came, and the giant behind the counter (was Link at Ahzull's house?) shooed him away. "You're too young for bombs or big metal shields," he said, and Link nodded as if he understood and scampered off.

The bustling activity outside persisted, even as the terrified Link muddled through it in a pitiful search for a place free from accusations, peering eyes, and all the noise.

He ran through the back alleys until he finally found a place that was suitably quiet. Perhaps it was too quiet, as Navi chose the moment of silence to interject her own opinion.

"Hey! Link! You shouldn't have run into town without asking me first!" She shot out from under his cap. "That was really dangerous! What if something had happened to you and I wasn't able to warn you about it?"

Link sniffled and Navi noticed that he was close to tears. She softened. "Hey, now, listen. It's all okay now. You just calm down, and then we'll go back into town and ask where the castle is and find the princess." Link didn't look any more cheered. "The princess will help us, and everything won't be so scary."

"Come on, Link, please don't cry," she tried.

Link kept staring into the reflection pool, like he could see past the giant stone building that lay on its placid surface. At first, Navi continued bombarded him with soothing ideas and questions, but she finally regressed into simply sitting by him and letting him compose himself like the water in the pool.

"That building is pretty," he eventually said, and he was right- it was an enormous sanctuary, with grandiose carvings lining its walls and towers, and a stout posture that could endure even the ravages of time. It kept a silent vigil, and Navi began to feel intimidated by its stoic aura.

"Do you want to go in?"

"No."

"Oh." Somewhere inside, she felt relieved. " Do you want to go back into the town?"

Wordlessly, silently, he got up and started in the direction of the town. Navi climbed into his hat and shivered.


	8. Zelda's Lullaby

Link wasn't the only one who had been dreaming.

When Zelda had seen him first, he had been a simple figure bathed in light, and what a glorious light it was! It cleaved through the Evils of her sight and presented the key of salvation before her- a hero dressed in the green of the holy token that heralded his origins. Now he was here, close enough to reach out and touch. Was it possible that she was asleep still?

Link was surprised to find another child waiting for him in the depths of the huge fortress he had just snuck into, but his surprise turned to embarrassment when she began to laugh at him.

"Oh, please don't be so upset! I had prophesized about our meeting." For reasons he did not understand, Link's flustered fog immediately dissipated at her reassurance. This girl harbored absolutely no ill will- he felt like he knew her, but he didn't know why.

Still, he trusted her with his feelings immediately. "What is 'prophesized'?"

Navi, who had taken refuge in her child's hat, tugged on his hair in an effort to tell the boy that he was looking an ignorant fool.

Zelda only smiled. "A prophesy is a memory, only it shows the future and not the past."

Link thought hard about what she said. "A dream."

In reply, she turned her head to the side. "A special dream. But yes." Excitedly, she went on to describe the vividness of her vision, how the forest must have sent him as a blessed emissary, and then backed up and remembered her manners. "I'm Zelda, Princess of Hyrule," she told him. "What is your name?"

"Link." He answered immediately and with no hesitation. This girl was not only the princess he had been searching for, but she made him feel compelled to answer, do, and be anything she asked of him. In fact, it was a feeling not unlike the one Saria had inspired within him and that alone made Zelda even dearer.

As it turned out, the sudden trust was mutual- Zelda could swear that she had heard the forest boy's uncommon name before and she became even fonder of him than she had been already. She smiled and told him the great secret of the goddesses' Triforce. "Please keep this a secret from everyone," she warned.

A secret from everyone. A secret to everybody. Link felt a tug on his chest as he thought of Shad.

"If someone with a righteous heart makes a wish, it will lead Hyrule to a golden age of prosperity. But if someone with an evil mind has his wish granted, the world will be consumed by evil…"

A secret to everybody. The words kept playing in his ears.

"... But the sages built the Temple of Time to protect the Triforce from evil." Zelda's eyes twinkled.

Link saw the scary building from Castle Town in his mind's eye. He shivered as he thought of how eerie the place was- he could easily believe Zelda when she said that it housed a Sacred Realm. The giant, tomblike structure had managed to still all of the life around it and bury it within itself. Soundless, merciless, pitiless, ethereal- it was also beautiful, but that alone could not justify to Link why anyone would ever dare try and open whatever doors lay within.

However, as Zelda informed him how one could conceivably enter the deepest chambers of the eternal Temple, he knew that was exactly what he was going to do. The words in his head grew louder.

A secret to everybody.

The princess looked at him in concern. "Did you understand well what I just told you?"

"Um, yes," Link replied, and he wasn't lying.

She smiled at him again, but the glow quickly drained from her face as she gestured to the window behind her. "I forgot to tell you. The other element from my dream- the dark clouds- I think they symbolize this man…"

Although he stood half a head shorter than Zelda, Link could easily see through to the next room. A lush hallway filled the glass in the window frame, with purple fabric adorning the walls and the gilded soldiers standing at attention. Their attention was not on Link, however, and neither was the forest child's on them- the black boots that cast a menacing shadow onto the rich carpet eclipsed the rest of the world from every onlooker as they carried their wearer forward.

The boot became a leg, the leg became a body, and the body became a humanoid figure. He did not present himself in the finery of a king, but Link automatically knew that was what this being was- he carried himself with a power no mere human could command, and he did it even though the leather and metal clothes he wore were constructed in such a way as to hide the slightness of his body caused by famine and dehydration. The ragged fabric fluttering off his back and wrists was torn and yellowed with age and something else that Link could only identify as the remnants of bloodstains. He was a leader, a warrior, and a merciless creature with a hungry demeanor like a coyote.

The metal studs on his gloves and shoes gave the effect of outstretched claws, like he was ready to strike at any moment.

Ganondorf, as Zelda had labeled him, did not even attempt to conceal his nature through his dress even in the court of a monarch and his physical features only added to his sinister image. In fact, the Gerudo King looked like a creature of legend with his fiery hair and dark grey skin- neither his locks nor his complexion were an ordinary color by themselves, but even if they hadn't been so outstanding, the two traits would not go together. The impossible impression was both stunning and unforgettable.

Was he a beast? Was he a monster? Was he a man? Was he a demon? Link was fascinated. He absorbed Ganondorf's shadowy aura and ignored Zelda's comments on him. There was something familiar about his dark presence, but in a way that wasn't quite the same as the closeness of the girl beside him…

Suddenly, the Gerudo King's face snapped to attention in Link's direction. three gleaming orbs found their way right into the boy's soul and Link was bewitched by the flames within.

The highest pit of fire in Ganondorf's face was really the great gemstone that fell between his brows, and Link knew it, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that the ornament was not a piece of jewelry. It was a third eye masquerading as a crown and acting as a larger window to Ganondorf's hellacious soul. What was this King, really?

In the split second that their eyes met, Link swore that the voice in his head did not belong to his inner consciousness but to the presence behind the window. "A secret to everybody," it sneered.

Link backed off.

"Did he see you?" Zelda squeaked, and the look on Link's face told her all she needed to know. "Don't worry. He doesn't know what we are planning… yet!" Her gleaming teeth should have inspired confidence, but Link's returning grin was very half-hearted.

_A secret to everybody._

It wasn't Ganondorf's voice this time, but Shad's once more. Link gave another fleeting glance to the windowpane- something didn't feel right. Zelda's reflection looked distorted, like the glass had been thrown on the ground and shattered. _Even the best laid plans go awry,_ he thought.

Zelda mistakenly took Link's unsettlement as confusion over her plan. "Let's get the Triforce before Ganondorf does!" She swooped in towards the shorter conspirator. "I will protect the ocarina of time with all my power! He shall not have it!" Then, excitedly, she stretched out her arm. "You go find the other two Spiritual Stones!"

Hurriedly, she scrawled out something on a piece of paper and gave it to him. "This will come in handy, I just know it."

Link fingered the paper and looked uncomprehendingly at the words inside. "You should leave before the guards notice you," she urged, but not impolitely.

As obedient as any soldier, Link hurried off to obey her decree. The soothing lullaby of the courtyard and the stream faded back in and he began to feel soothed again. What it was about this little paradise in the castle, Link didn't know, but the air here gave him a calm feeling much like Zelda herself did. He banished all of his doubts about his mission and tucked her letter into his shirt. He'd ask Navi what it said later, when they were outside.

With his mind made up, he made to leave through the way he came in but stopped under the red gaze of the most commanding woman he had ever seen.

This was one more person to meet before he stepped outside and into his destiny.

"I am Impa, the nursemaid," she said. "Come now. I know of your instrument." Her tone was unfittingly kind. "It was my role to teach a song to the Royal messenger." Impa gave an almost imperceptible smile. "I think you'll find it has a strange sort of power."

Before Link could consider bombarding her with questions, Impa proved the song's mystique to be potent indeed, for when he heard it, the boy forgot everything.

The melody represented everything Zelda and this place was- Link couldn't explain it- it didn't have the complexities of the real composition, but it was louder than the buzzing of the bees and rustling of the leaves because it was a real melody and not just the noises that melded together inside him. 

Link heard music everywhere, just beneath the surface of reality. It was the same as how he could hear the voices of the trees in Kokiri forest while the other forest children could not.

He had often thought about trying to put down the feeling in the air around him into something tangible when he was alone and others couldn't call him crazy or stupid for it. This had been his biggest, ugliest secret until Saria snuck up on him by accident while he was talking to his reflection about how to express feelings in songs and songs in words.

Only Saria knew that Link could hear music in everything, and that was why she had shown him her secret hideaway- and taught him to play the ocarina. In fact, she was the one who told him that words would never be able to hold the true power of what he wanted to express but that one day Link's ocarina could. Saria said that she knew that because she could understand the music, too.

And now that he had heard Impa's song, Link knew what Saria had meant now.

The melody that Impa played was perfectly crafted to simplify what it represented and accurately depict its subject while still maintaining most of the meaning.

Had he a better grasp on the written language, Link would have said that Zelda's Lullaby was like music's equivalent to finding the single most precise word to encapsulate the otherwise indescribable, condensing an idea into a symbol everyone could understand.

Bliss.

Peace.

Maybe even a glimpse at a form of love.

Link was so entranced that he didn't feel the emptiness in his chest when he pulled out the fairy ocarina his best friend had given him when he left his home and blew into it. He didn't think or feel anything, he just did.

Impa was surprised that the boy could play back the song after only hearing it once- and she was a little unnerved when he correctly continued the melody past what she had played for him.

He played it like he had learned it long before, like he really knew the feeling it conveyed.

It was beautiful.

When Link opened his blue eyes, Impa knew that his performance had a strong effect on him as well. He was in a daze and she knew that he wouldn't be able to understand anything she told him until he was out of the castle.

She put away her flute and led him by the hand outside of the palace.


	9. Liars

He didn't always dream of the dark landscape, at least not in every slumbering moment, but the dream of dark and light horses would still loom on the edges of his other visions, waiting eagerly to invade whatever else he was seeing in his mind's eye. It was always there in some way, whether as constant dark clouds on the corner of his new, blue dream-sky or as a faraway rumbling of violent weather, daring to break through and take over.

Tonight, he saw Saria and her secret place. She smiled at him and held out her hand. Suddenly, the rain began to fall from above. This was odd- it rained in the Forest Valley, but it did not rain in the Woods. When he looked to his surroundings again, though, he discovered he was not in the Woods at all, but in a field- it was the field he'd crossed to find Zelda, he knew now- and then he saw the princess and Impa rush by on the white horse, and then…

Hellfire. Ganondorf engulfed him in his eyes with that burning desire and Link woke up before he was incinerated.

The nightmare was not so frightening anymore. He now knew what the vision meant and he was so glad that he had made a plan with Zelda to keep such a terrible dream from coming true. Link smiled to himself and went back to sleep, thinking that even if the dream still invaded his resting mind, it would serve as a congratulatory reminder that such an event would never happen instead of a prophesy of despair. Contented, he adjusted his hat over Navi and went back to sleep on the soft mattress.

Still, in his heart, he had doubts. He prayed he would never have to fall victim to such hungry eyes.

Again Link drifted off, and this time had visions of a deep, dark place- and hands, and teeth, and the dead. And hands, and teeth, and the dead. And hands, and teeth, and the dead- and hands, and hands, and hands, hands, hands, death, hands, hands, _such cold, dead hands_ with a hunger that was not that of Ganondorf, no, it was not a want for things of the flesh, but for something more, more, _more_ \- something that could not be put into words.

Something that could not be put into music.

This terrible thing, whatever it was, ravenously sucked the very being out of the world around it until

there

was

nothing

left.

Absolute silence like the Woods, except where the Woods kept the hoot of the owls, the croak of the frogs, or the chirp of the crickets, this kept not a sound; it was a void, an absolute gaping wound in the world where something had been taken and the lacking itself was tainted.

Was there no music? No magic? No life? Yes, those things were all gone, but there was something more that was missing, something much more important—

Then, Link was going backwards through the stony tunnel and away from the long, grasping hands and gnashing teeth, like time was reversing. He saw a big, red stain on the floor beneath his retreating feet and he felt sick.

As his body heaved from gagging, time suddenly moved forwards and threw him onto the bloody X on the floor. Instead of hard stone, his knee hit nothing; he went through it and he felt the emptiness, the sheer lack, swallow him whole and he saw himself falling further and further down into the abyss. The stained floor had looked like it had substance, but it was an illusion. Reality in the dark dreamworld had unknown rules and he did not know if the endless darkness he was plummeting into would encapsulate him forever or if the ground would come and end everything.

Link stopped falling to come face-to-face with those teeth and those cold, rotting fingers gripped him again. He blanched at the sensation of it all.

This hunger that the thing with the many hands and teeth felt in this deep, dark, dank hole wasn't for earthly things, but for something so much more that Link had. It didn't want music or magic or even life or love.

What was it that Link possessed that was so precious?

Link listened closely to this abomination's nothingness as its neck just extended out more and more, past the point of the physically possible, until he could see the rotting flesh gathered upon its sinews tear from being stretched so far. Link coolly realized that he was no longer on the other end of the thing's teeth, but was watching it devour another person from a distance, like he was not part of the scene.

The creature held its victim's face in its jaws and Link did nothing to stop it.

He heard its jaw shut in tandem with a clap of thunder and its pale, fleshy, undead neck became the healthy, muscular, and live one of a white horse carrying a princess and nursemaid on its back.

Link awoke again with the image of Ganondorf's eyes boring into him. A tinkling of bells and a crowing sounded somewhere in the distance to herald the sun's arrival and Link needed no other goading to make him happily abandon his dreams and greet it.

He sat up in the bed and let his arms extend to their full length before slipping out of the covers and putting on his hat.

"Good morning!" said a voice. Link did not truly know what morning was, but he returned the greeting and came downstairs, with Navi immediately stirring and darting under his green hat.

\---

The previous day, Link travelled to Kakariko Village on Impa's instruction and was immediately captivated by a white cucco clucking by the entrance. He, with all the care a young child who didn't want to scare a feathered friend could, picked up the bird and carried it around high above his head for any miniature girls in bright yellow that might be lurking around to see and claim. Link walked around the little town like that for some time (it was small compared to Castle Town, but Link still thought it was huge) and then he found, wonder of wonders, another white bird- and then another! They were everywhere!

Link hauled his feathery passenger (who had now calmed down and happily sitting upon his head) around until a young woman with hair the color of strawberries stopped him and claimed the cuckoo.

"I keep them as pets, but they give me such horrible allergies!" she said.

Link looked up at the bird. "What's an 'allergy'?"

"I get goosebumps, no, cucco bumps!"

Link held out the bird to her, which made her panic a little. "Can you make it give you one? I want to see what it is."

At the closeness of her pet, the lady wrinkled her face up into an expression of distaste. "No!" she shouted, and the nastiness that she said it in contrasted sharply with the innocent inflection of her previous comments.

"Oh." Link held the bird to himself again and it calmed down. "Can you make it give me one, then?"

She looked at him with her big, blue eyes. "If you aren't allergic, you can't get them. When I touch them, I get little bumps all over my skin. It's terrible."

"Why?"

"Because I'm allergic, that's why."

"But why?" In his hat, Navi smacked Link for being rude.

"I don't know why! It's just that way. I can't help it."

Link began to wince as his fairy proceeded to pull on his hair. He got the hint and just settled for saying, "Oh," once more instead of inquiring further. The redheaded lady again blinked her bright eyes and cocked her head to the side in a coquettish fashion.

"Will you please find my cuccos and put them in that pen over there?" She sent her gaze to a little fenced-in area that was crammed beneath the side of a crooked house built onto the edge of a small cliff, like a continuation of the jagged earth.

"Link," whispered Navi, "You should help her since you've been so obnoxious."

Link would have given her a hand anyway, but he was glad that Navi wanted to help her, too. He was also pleased that he had agreed to do it- running after the things was lots of fun and he got to learn so many things, like that cuccos could fly short distances and take you with them.

"I'm just like you, Navi!" he said as he fluttered in midair with the help of a frantic fowl.

"Oh, really?" The fairy said, exiting his hat to hover alongside him. With a mischievous laugh, she darted forward and did several loop-de-loops in midair. "Can you do that?"

"No," replied Link, "But why would I want to? I'd get sick!"

Navi gave another gleeful response and playfully tugged on his ear before sneaking back under his green cap. Perhaps this boy wasn't as foolhardy as she thought- any other child would have tried her little stunt and fallen on their rear just hard enough to learn their lesson. Link's incessant questions weren't mindless, either- he always had a reason to ask and he almost always out whatever he learned to good use. He was an oddball.

Despite his perceptiveness and foresight, however, Navi knew that Link was still a child and needed guidance.

And had you asked him, Link would have wholeheartedly agreed with her.

He dropped the last snowy white cucco into the redheaded lady's pen. She gave a warm smile. "Thank you for finding my cuccos!" Link nervously nodded back at her and scuffed his feet.

"You're welcome," he muttered. "Sorry about your goosebumps."

She waved the problem away. "Here, I'll give you this. It's fine glass and I think you'll get a lot of use out of it."

Young Link almost had a heart attack when he saw the glass bottle in her hands. Was she a fairy-catcher? His left hand shot up to his hat to guard the little passenger within it. "What do you do with it?"

The lady didn't notice the accusing tone of his question, or if she did, she ignored it. "Why, you put things in it, silly!"

"What kind of things?"

"You silly goose! Anything you want! Water, bugs, juice, um," with a quirk of her head, she tried to think of other things a boy might like to do with a bottle. "I guess you could put a candle in there to make a lantern, if you wanted."

Link wasn't done with her. "Do you use it to catch fairies?"

His serious tone and stony face coupled with his subject matter made the lady erupt into a fit of giggles. "No, I certainly don't! But I guess you could if you wanted to!"

Beneath the cover of her charge's green hat, Navi released her grip on Link's wild hair. Most Hylian adults did not believe in fairies- and the fairies strove to keep it that way. To the fey folk, nonbelievers weren't a danger. It was the faithful adults that caused problems. True, there were benign and worthy ones in the world, but the risk of encountering a bitter, greedy, and cruel fairy catcher was too great for creatures like Navi to show themselves to just anyone; fairies only appeared to those they deemed safe.

This is part of the reason why only children can become Kokiri. However, not all children are found and chosen- the unlucky souls that could not prove their inner goodness before the Woods claimed them were warped into Skullchildren.

Link didn't fully understand all of that, but this girl's reaction proved to him that she was not a threat. Link nodded at her. "Okay. You shouldn't catch them unless they want to be caught."

The girl stifled her amusement as best she could. "I see."

Navi hurriedly whispered that Link should thank her.

"Oh! Right!" The boy said brightly. Navi tugged on his hair to make him be quiet, but the girl hadn't noticed his lapse in attention because she was too busy smothering her laughter. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she breathed. After a few sighs and stray chuckles, she asked Link a few questions of her own. "Where are your Mother and Father? Are you travelling? I can tell you aren't from around here."

Images of the Great Deku Tree came to mind and fluttered in Link's head like the dry leaves that had fallen from the branches when he'd left.

"My Father is dead," he said. Link suddenly didn't care that Mido didn't think he was a true child of the forest. Link would always consider the Forest Guardian his father.

He hadn't the time to ask what in the world a "Mother" was before he was drowned out by the redhead's cooing. "You poor dear! Do you have anywhere to go?"

"Yes."

"Where, sweetheart?"

"I don't know."

The girl looked aghast. "What do you mean you have somewhere to go but you don't know where it is?"

"Well," Link began, "I'm looking for something. Something really special. But I don't know where it is. I'm going to find where I'm going!" He looked her straight in the eye when he said it- to him, there wasn't anything unusual about what he was doing.

The lady found Link very odd, but he wasn't insincere. On the contrary, he was the very picture of blind innocence and honesty and she immediately felt compelled to take care of him. "Why don't you stay with us for the night and try to find what you are looking for tomorrow?"

Link, still unsure of the concept of day and night, furrowed his eyebrows. "Tomorrow?"

"You poor dear, night will be coming soon. You can't stay out here in the dark and cold!"

Navi gripped her young charge's scalp as he gritted his teeth. Night's darkness was one challenge they did not want to face without shelter.

"I would like that very much. Yes please!"

She took him by the hand up to the house that was sitting upon the craggy hill that overlooked the cucco pen. "My name is Repa. What is your name?"

"Link," he said. He noticed that she didn't seem bothered by the cucco feathers that had stuck to his hands, but he didn't want Navi to start using his hair to reign in his bad manners again. He wisely kept his mouth shut.

They climbed up the uneven stairs to the main part of her house, which was even larger than Link had previously thought. The red tiles on the roof and matching coloration on the shutters were brighter than any flower Link had ever seen. With his nose upturned and his mouth agape, he looked like a codfish.

"I'm going to fix dinner. Do you want to help?" Miss Repa asked.

"Is it broken?"

Miss Repa laughed at him and brought him inside to spend the night, and that was how Link eventually found himself sitting across from her for breakfast. 

They were having leftover cucco from last night.

As with Link's allergen-laden hands from the day before, Miss Repa had prepared that bird without any signs of irritation or bumps. Again, Link didn't say anything (especially since the man living with Miss Repa had insisted that the girl had horrible allergies and should be treated with the utmost respect), but he was curious.

He thanked his hostess for the meal and left Miss Repa, the man who lived with her, and her big house all alone on the rocky hill.

"Navi," Link said to the fairy when she exited his hat, "I don't think that Miss Repa had allergens."

"Allergies, you mean. I don't think she had them either."

Link was aghast. "But why would she lie?" He was very puzzled and hurt. "The Kokiri would lie to me so they could pull pranks on me, but I think Miss Repa actually liked me. She fed me and gave me a nice bed."

Poor guardian Navi didn't want to answer such a hard question like this; the reasons people lie are vast and various and this answer would really upset her companion. Given the magnitude of their mission and surroundings, though, she knew Link needed to face some hard truths.

"Link, people lie for a lot of reasons. I think she lied because she didn't want to have to go find her cuccos herself. She manipulated you into doing it."

"Why didn't she just ask me to do it without that silly story?"

"Because then you might've refused."

"But I would have said yes."

"She didn't know that."

"So she wanted to trick me into doing something?"

"Yes."

"So that's what 'manipulate' means."

Navi was stunned at his deduction. "Kind of, yes." She wasn't sure if she should praise his clever reasoning or try to comfort him first, but the next words out of his mouth told her to keep quiet.

"A lot of people are going to lie to me to manipulate me to do whatever they want to do even if I don't want to do it, aren't they?" He thought about Zelda. "I don't think Zelda was lying. I am going to trust her and I am going to trust Saria and," he looked at his little blue fairy, "I am going to trust you."

Navi hoped that he could trust her enough to know that any lie she told him was for his own protection. She quietly prayed to the Goddesses as the pair explored Kakariko Village.


	10. The Call

Once upon a time, before the Goddess and then in her absence, the Lost Woods ruled over the land of Hyrule. The world began and ended beneath their boughs, and came into their own only when the Woods deemed them good and ready to shape the land with their own hands. But, once they left the Woods, they could never return, lest they give the Woods permission to lay claim to them again and mangle their bodies into something between life and death, forever tied to its cryptic will.

Old Hylian thinking suggested that the Woods were the physical manifestation of Farore herself, slowly growing around the world and leaving clean and new the earth where its oldest trees did, finally, die for good, but Navi had existed long enough to know this was untrue. The great Goddess above Farore had wrested the land of Hyrule from the trees by force, and Demise had razed his portion to go to war with her. But the Woods still existed everywhere, growing like roots in the liminal spaces of Hyrule and the realms beyond and anchoring itself beneath the skin of reality itself.

Death Mountain, proud and present beneath the glowing sun, was no exception. The vines of the Woods crept deep into its heart and peered at Goron City from within a tunnel near the bottom, like a creature in a cave watching the everyday lives of mice and contemplating ensnaring them all for a snack.

The Gorons had piled boulders in front of it to try and pretend they could keep it out of their world, but that was never enough. The vines and roots grew through them, stronger from the minerals in their stone hearts, and sprawled out lazily on the other side, as if to taunt the Gorons for even trying to hold them out.

Link found his way through the layers of Goron tunnels and pits to them almost immediately, like he could hear the voices of the fairies and the song of the Woods just as clearly as Navi herself could.

"Saria," he said, reaching out his hand and placing it on the crumbling stone.

"Link," said Navi, "We are here for the Spiritual Stone of Fire. You haven't forgotten, have you?"

"No," he said. "No. But I need to go here. I need to go here first, Navi. I know I do." He pressed his face into the rock, and for a moment Navi thought he would begin sobbing again. "I want to see Saria. She's waiting for me."

"The princess is waiting for you, too," Navi reminded. "And besides. Do you think the Woods will welcome you back? You left them."

Link nodded with a fervent sureness Navi had never seen in him before. "Yes. Yes, I know it. I can hear it." He pulled at the first stone with his tiny hands, the fingers still covered in red clay. It came loose and tumbled to the ground, and so he leaned in to pull down another one, and then another.

Honestly, his sudden confidence was alarming, but the whisper of the Woods grew louder and louder to Navi with each stone Link moved.

"Come here," they said. "We've missed you," they said. "We know. We know what you have done and you have not done. The forest meadow may think one thing, but we are not them. Come to us willingly, and we will never make you stay."

Link removed another stone, and the rock wall crumbled and spilled the rest of the way in front of him. A rush of cool, damp air followed the dust, and the echo of music followed from somewhere deep in the tunnel. He passed through the opening in the rock wall and towards it.

"Link," said Navi, "are you sure this is the way?" Her instructions had been to guide him to complete his quest, and honestly, she had no idea what the Woods might do to him with the Great Deku Tree gone and the arrangement between the Woods and the Valley turned on its head. She had been born there, and yet it was still as much of a stranger as it had been before that. "Do you remember what you said, about manipulation?"

Link said nothing, instead venturing in deeper, and then disappearing completely like the darkness within had opened its mouth and swallowed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and thank you for reading. These earlier chapters are most likely not what you are expecting, but the tone and severity of this story is meant to change and grow along with Link. It is also more important than some of you might think, at this point, that we explore some of the dynamics of Link's early childhood. This story is about his growth, so every angle we can get on him is useful.
> 
> With that said, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this! Any feedback is appreciated!


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